Carbon Black

Carbon Black was one of the first companies to argue that endpoint security should record what happens on a machine continuously, the way a flight recorder does, so that an investigator can replay an intrusion rather than infer it from an alert. It came together from two firms: Bit9, an application allowlisting company, and Carbon Black, which made the recorder; they merged in 2014 and took the Carbon Black name in 2016. It has changed hands twice since. VMware bought it in 2019, and Broadcom acquired VMware in 2023, so the products are now part of Broadcom's security division alongside Symantec's enterprise range. The line still reflects both halves of the original merger: Carbon Black App Control is the descendant of Bit9's allowlisting product, still used to lock down fixed-function machines such as tills and industrial controllers, while Carbon Black Cloud Endpoint Standard and Carbon Black EDR carry the recording and detection side. Bit9 also appears separately in this index; it is the same lineage under its original name.

Country

🇺🇸United States

Headquarters

🇺🇸Waltham, United States

Year Established

2002

Employees

1,000

Customers

5,600 organisations (2019)Source: Web search — securityweek.com

Users

10M devices protected (2020)Source: VMware Announces Intent to Acquire Lastline

Revenue

$70.6M (2015)Source: Web search — sec.gov

Website

https://www.broadcom.com/products/carbon-black

Status

Acquired

Acquired by

Broadcom